


when the ice melts

by megancrtr



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Magic, Beginning of the World, End of the World, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 20:26:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megancrtr/pseuds/megancrtr
Summary: The world froze over when the fae came out of hiding. Kent plays hockey and survives.





	when the ice melts

 

The Aces mutter low to one another so the fae outside the locker room can’t hear them. Wind whistles through the thin, cracked walls. Players pull on one pair of pants and then another. They talk about warmth, about when the fae will next feed them. The players talk about hunger that never quite goes away and air that never warms. They roll on two pairs of socks and then a third. They clip down padding and then shrug another layer over it.

Kent though, Kent has on exactly one pair of socks and one pair of pants. The fae fed him magic today, slid heat into his veins and stopped the craving in his stomach. Kent taps his feet against the floor. Kent told the fae what they wanted, and he got rewarded. Got some magic. His skates clunk against the floor. Again, and again.

Sitting next to him, Raz scowls and pulls a cowl over her head. She doesn't tell him to stop, but Kent knows she wants to. So he does it again. She scowls deeper, shoulders tensing as she tucks the edges of the knit into the top of her shirt.

“Ready to go,” Kent says. He hums a little, knocks his knee against Raz’s. Raz jerks away. She winds a scarf over her throat, mouth. She's been here for a while now, not the longest, but a while.

Kent smiles without meaning it, the edges of his eyes crinkling from years of practice. He pounds the blades of his skates against the floor. Sharp enough to draw blood, but not sharp enough to leave cuts in the floor. The sooner they go out, the sooner they're done, the sooner someone dies, and the closer to death they all get.

“What you so jittery about, Captain?” James snarls from across the room. He has three missing teeth and one brown with rot. “Already told the fae who you want them to bleed?” Kent doesn't look at James, keeps his eyes on the far wall as everyone stops speaking. James leans forward on his elbows, spitting on the floor. It ices over in one heartbeat, two. “That what you get in exchange for ratting on us? You get to be the grim reaper?”

Kent ignores him and keeps stepping in his skates. Used to be how he'd stay warm when body heat in the dressing rooms wasn't enough.

“Bet it's going to be Devon they slaughter.” James jerks his head, and Kent can’t help the flick of his eyes.

Devon tightens his jaw at the sudden attention of the room, keeps wrapping his stick even though it’s already taped. He has on a couple of layers of clothing, like everyone else. Kent can’t see the blood, not yet. Devon’s jersey hides what started to seep through the other layers. But it won’t for long. It takes days for the slashes to close and the blood to stop. Kent didn’t watch the fae whip Devon with magic wrapped tight and barbed—Kent never does if he can avoid it—but he saw the aftermath, knows how it works.

James continues, “They've already done a number, and they're probably blood thirsty to finish the job.” The wind howls, and in the distance, Kent can hear the roar of the fae in the stadium. “Yeah,” James snarls, pulling Kent’s eyes back. “We know what kind of captain you are. Dangling us in the cold so you can get your fucking magic.” James jerks to his feet and takes the three steps across the room. He jabs his glove into Kent’s chest. “You are such a pathetic human.”

Kent’s lips twitch up. “Pathetic humans live the longest.”

Caits snorts from the other side of Raz. “Why the fuck you even trying to survive?” Caits asks. “Still think you’re going to find Zimms?”

Kent snaps his head around, smile gone. James slams Kent back against the wall. Kent shoves James hand down.

James laughs, leers. “Your Zimms isn’t fucking out there. You would’ve played him by now. I bet the fae fucked him to death. Like they did to Jari.”

Kent rams into James. James hits the ground and shouts. Kent sheds his gloves. He punches James once, twice. James heaves and slams Kent against the floor. Kent rolls away, staggers to his feet. James does the same. Kent surges forward.

The door bangs open. Kent jerks back. James drops his hands. Frigid air blooms into their locker room. Alvarie with her icy blue eyes and pale, dull skin, looks at them from the doorway. “Time,” she says, her eyes scraping over both of them.

Kent shoulders past James to his equipment. He tugs on his helmet, scoops up his gloves, grabs his stick.

“Win this,” Alvarie tells them, threats dripping from her words. Ice shifts through Kent. He shakes it off. He takes a breath and squares his shoulders. He’ll win this for the fae, for the team, but mostly for himself. Kent has always wanted to survive more than most, and the team knows that. It's the only thing they rely on him for. Winning games. Surviving them. No one wants to die in the rink.

Kent glances back at James, and James nods, jaw tight, bruise beginning to form on his cheek. James tugs on a ski mask.

Kent is first out the door of the locker room that’s barely more than a shack and past Alvarie, first onto the frozen lake with the moon still rising in the night. He hears the team take the ice behind him, skates slicing over the ground. Kent doesn’t feel the bite of the air. From his fingertips to his nose to his toes, he is warm. But he remembers playing through numb fingers and frozen joints. Kent skates the edge of the rink, hugging the walls of clear, thick ice that cage them. He cuts through the center of the ice, not quite touching the blue line neither team ventures across. Fae slam their fists into the walls as he skates passed. They shout at him to give them a show, showing off their sharp teeth and screaming out winter air.

Kent glides to the middle of the ice and tugs in a puck. He shoots on Bells. She gloves it out of the air. She discards the puck. Kent skates closer.

Bells shakes out her arms, cuts up the ice with her skates, waiting for the next shot. Kent drags in another puck. Bells glances at him, away. “What do you want?” Her eyes dart around the stands, at the gaping fae.

“Number 31,” Kent says. “He dekes before shooting the opposite way. Always.”

Bells nods sharply. “Told me already. I know.” She drops her gaze to center where Raz is gearing up for a run, dribbling the puck.

“You remember or we’re going to lose and—”

“If we lose this,” Bells cuts him off dropping into a crouch. “If we lose. If we—you better not let them take her,” Bells says, her stance tense and eyes on Raz, starting her run towards the net.

Kent doesn’t remind Bells the fae’s sacrifice is random. That he has no say. She doesn't believe it anyway. Doesn't believe anything Kent says really. He doesn't blame her. He wouldn't trust him either. She’s been here barely a month, and she already knows better. Raz shoots at the net. Bells blocks it.

Kent drifts off, finds Devon handling a puck, quicker and quicker and then losing it. He scrapes another one towards him. Starts again. “Hey,” Kent says. Devon jerks away and loses the puck.

Devon shakes his head, face twisted in pain. He starts to skate away. “Hey,” Kent says again and gets close, gets in front of Devon. He crowds the boy back against the boards. Kid’s been here maybe four months. Should’ve known better than to piss off the fae. Kent drops his hand onto the back of Devon’s head, pushes their helmets together before Devon can leave. Devon’s breath comes out warm. It fogs the air between them. Devon tries to twist away, but Kent grips tighter.

“Play the fuck through it,” Kent says. “You hear me? You’ve lasted this long, don’t fuck it up now.” Devon jerks his head. Enough of a nod for Kent. Kent shoves Devon away before Kent says something stupid like, “I can't win if you don't fucking play.”

Something like, “If I can't win, I die.”

Like, “If I die, I can't find Zimms.”

The game is hard, fast and rough. Like playing for his life always is. Kent shoots, scores. Bells lets two in. Kent shoots, scores. He wheels around, going for a third when he's hit from behind. Kent slams into the ice. His head cracks against it. Kent hears shouting, cursing. He struggles to his feet and then swerves away from a knife. Macher’s knife. Macher shoves Kent away with his free hand. He's after the player from the other team, 23.

Caits grabs Kent and tugs him further from the brawl. Macher is first blood. It drips from a slice on his cheek. The droplets freeze as they hit the ice. The fae go silent. Kent hears grunts from Macher and 23. He hears Caits heavy breath. He hears Macher shout. Kent watches Macher’s knife slide across the player’s throat. Fewer layers of fabric there. Kent hears the blood squirt across the ice, across them.  
  
Blood splatters onto Kent's skin. Fuck, he thinks. It's warm. He blinks, and the blood freezes against his eyelashes. Raz, across the ice, wretches, but nothing comes up. Kent can’t take his eyes away from her, crunched, heaving. They haven’t eaten in years, practically since birth. Raz looks big, but it’s all the layers. Fuck. Kent’s stomach aches, the magic pumped through him not enough. Barely enough. Barely survivable.

Caits shoves Kent back farther. A referee with his sharp teeth and icy eyes scrapes by them. They scramble away even more. The ref circles Macher and the fallen player, though no one tries to get close. They know better. The player bleeds out on the ice, and Kent watches anything but that. He watches the other team huddle together. He watches the fae slam their palms against the ice, feet against the ground. He watches Macher catch his breath. He watches the moon hang overhead.

“This is what you’ve fucking sided with, Parser!” James shouts across the ice. Kent jerks at his voice. “Bloodthirsty fae.” James gestures to the dead player, to the stands where the fae have started to chant. Kent looks away from the fae. Their voices swell. The ice shivers.

Kent’s grits his teeth and doesn’t shout back at James. He wipes his hand across his cheek, scrapes off the blood. Kent has been playing hockey for years, surviving for longer. James has only been here for less than a year and probably won't last much longer. Kent has seen hundreds of players die. Some from the game, others from the cold. And Kent refuses to die because he was too stupid to not do everything in his power to survive. He knows where the fae’s magic comes from. He knows at what cost. Oh, does he know. But he doesn’t want to fucking die. And if that means siding with the fae, telling them when his teammates, when Devon fucks up, then that’s what Kent’s going to do.

James doesn't have the same will to live. He’s not a survivor.

Magic thunders out of 23’s dead body, shoves players backwards, rings in Kent's ears. The fae sing together, spinning the magic into their bones, and the power fades from the ice.

Referees haul the player off the ice, dragging him by his skates. The wall of ice opens, and the faes’ incantation thunders out, weaving the magic closer onto their bones.

The ice closes. The game resumes.

Kent wins the faceoff, skating through frozen slashes of blood.

The Aces win the game.

Kent turns away from the other team as the fae choose which player to kill tonight. 

*

The fire the team huddles around burns low. Its smoke escapes through cracks in a ceiling black with it. Bells curls into Raz, James around them. Caits joins the group and then the other players. Devon isn’t in the cluster. Alvarie took him away after the game, lust in her eyes and in the magic twitching along her fingertips.

Kent rolls away from his team, closes his eyes. Kent sleeps warmed by magic, twisted in a single, worn blanket, and dreaming of the time before hockey on moon lit ice. He dreams of playing under the sun, when fae didn’t care much to watch. He dreams of Jack, with his warm hands and warm breath.

Kent dreams of nights tucked into Jack’s arms, their breath clouding between them as they talked about turning 18, about what kind of hockey waited for them.

“We should run away,” Kent whispers. Live longer. Stay together. “Let’s go where there aren’t fae.” Where they won’t have to fight each other for life. Where they'll have to find food to survive. Kent laughs at the absurdity of his own words and presses his face into Jack’s neck, his hands into Jack’s hard, flat stomach. Kent hasn’t eaten anything in his life before. Doesn’t know what he can eat. Doesn’t know what he needs to survive. He’s heard stories: meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, grains.

Kent quiets and knocks his nose against Jack’s ear. He brushes his fingers over Jack’s divots of muscle. It’s warm underneath their blankets, a fire blazing next to them. “Let’s go where there isn’t any magic,” Kent mutters, almost too soft to be heard. “Where we have to eat.”

“I’d like that,” Jack says. “I’d like that a lot.” He slips his hands under Kent’s sweatshirt, and Kent presses into Jack’s warmth. Then Jack tells Kent he has a secret, and Kent shifts closer, closes pockets of air between their bodies. Jack pulls a hand away from Kent, reaches above his head and grabs a pinch of salt from his bag. He sprinkles it over them. Kent twists his head, and Jack breathes into Kent’s ear, “I had an apple once.”

Kent draws back to look at Jack’s eyes and can’t help the awe slipping into his voice. “Yeah?” Kent hasn’t even seen an apple before. He wonders where Jack found it, but it’s not important in the moment. Kent tucks his head back into Jack’s neck, breathes against it.

“It was really good. It felt good. I felt good. Fuck, I can’t even describe it. I’d never eaten anything before.”

“I eat snow sometimes,” Kent confesses.

Jack grins. “Rebel.” Jack turns to kiss Kent. Jack presses his fingers against Kent’s skin. “Then I had to shit,” Jack says into Kent’s mouth. “After the apple, and it was the weirdest feeling ever.”

Kent believes for a second he could die from laughter. From feeling this good, this happy, this warm.

Fuck. Kent never feels this warm anymore. Jack with his large body and hands pressing into him. With his hot blood and dangerous, shit-eating grin.

“We should eat a bison,” Kent tells Jack another night, trying to curl closer. Jack’s body is hot and scorching, wrapped around Kent’s. “Kill it with a skate, drain the blood, cook it over a fire. Eat it and wear the pelt.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, his words muffled against Kent’s hair. “Yeah, sounds good. Then we'd shit it all out. I heard we can grow food with our poop.”

“We’ll grow apples,” Kent says.

Kent dreams of laughter. Of suffocating on happiness. Of the warmth of the bison blood, and the thick meat between his teeth. Kent dreams of wrapping him and Jack in the bison’s hide. Kent dreams of never ending warmth.

Kent jerks awake, shivering. He tugs his single, thin blanket closer. He pulls his legs up to his chest. Kent squeezes his eyes closed, and the cold starts to settle into his bones. His fingers and toes ache, and then his shins do, too.

The door opens, and icy air flies into the room. Kent turns to look, and the fire flickers. It goes out and then embers catch. Barely. Devon staggers inside, across the thick line of salt at the door frame. Devon fumbles the door closed. He doesn’t have gloves. Doesn’t have socks. He’s going to be shit on the ice for at least the next couple of weeks, frostbite settled into his skin and carving away feeling. Devon limps to the fire, and James twists awake.

James says something too low for Kent to hear, and then gets up, untangling himself from the players on the floor. James pulls a fur with him, over to Devon, wraps his arms around Devon, pulling him carefully to the floor. James tugs off a pair of his own socks, rolls them onto Devon’s feet. He tugs the fur over the two of them, barricading Devon’s back as the younger player curls towards the fire, shivering, shaking.

Kent stops looking and doesn’t think about Devon. Kent doesn’t think about the long, jagged cuts crisscrossing Devon's back. How they’re still bleeding from magic. Kent doesn’t think about the fae taking Devon out into the cold after the game, stripping him and fucking him.

Kent doesn’t think about what happened to Devon because Kent wanted a day of warmth where cold didn’t bleed through his bones. Kent thinks instead about how if Devon hadn’t killed the elk—skinned it, cooked it, eaten it—Kent wouldn’t have had to say anything. It was Devon’s decision to kill the elk. To try and get another fur.

Kent shivers. Fuck. Kent wants a fur. He wants to be warm again. Kent squeezes his eyes shut. Kent wants Jack back. Jack kept him warm. Kent wants to be warm again. He wants magic. He wants whatever will make him stop aching, will give him feeling in his fingers again, forever.

*

One day, after Jack disappeared, and Kent went to the Aces, it was colder than it had ever been. So cold it hurt every time Kent breathed. Kent lost feeling in his fingers, in his toes. In his shins and thighs and arms. He tried to keep warm, jumping up and down, running. Eventually, he couldn’t feel his movements. Couldn’t feel his feet hitting the ground, knees bending. Fuck. Kent couldn’t feel his body move, even though he was moving. He was jumping up and down and running around, and fuck.

Kent knew he would die if he didn’t get warm. Kent looked at his teammates. Some of them had stopped moving, dropping instead to curl around a fire that burned lower and lower. And Kent couldn’t be that, be them. He knew Jack was out there, somewhere. Kent had to find him. At the very least, he needed to play all the teams. Find Jack. Run away with him. Kent can't remember if they'd ever promised anything aloud, but actions always spoke louder.

Kent couldn’t save Jack if Kent froze to death first. Kent couldn’t find Jack if he lost his fingers and couldn’t keep winning. Kent couldn’t help Jack if he didn’t survive.

So Kent went to the fae, stumbling in the cold, tripping on nothing. Kent found Alvarie, begged for warmth, for magic, and Alvarie smiled her sharp smile. “Give me something in return,” she told him. She asked for a secret. Something one of his teammates is doing that they shouldn’t be doing? That they’ve kept from the fae?

“And you’ll make me warm?” Kent asked, pitiful, hurting. “Feed me? It hurts. It all fucking hurts.”

Alvarie twitched her fingers, pressed them against Kent’s cheek. And for the first time ever, a fae’s fingers were warm. Heat spread down Kent’s body, and Kent felt himself shivering and then he stopped shaking. Alvarie drew her hand away, took away the heat.

Kent gasped, jerked. “Kaleah,” he said, chasing the magic. “Kaleah is pregnant.”

Alvarie grinned. She spun her fingers and sent magic down Kent’s throat, filling his stomach as his body thawed. His fingers twitched with warmth, and Kent told himself to forget about what he had done.

At practice, when Kent should be shivering, Leddy with his dark, sharp eyes said, “What did you do, Parser?”

Kent looked at his skates, clutched his stick.

“Parser,” Leddy shouted, teeth chattering between each word. “What did you give them in return? Parser!”

Alvarie turned up at practice like she never did. Leddy shoved Kent and screamed, and another player edged between them, pushed Leddy back because even then Kent played good hockey, even then Kent was the reason they won as many games as they did. Why so many of them were still alive. “Always looking out for yourself!” Leddy accused. He spun away when Kaleah yelled.

Alvarie dragged Kaleah to the center of the ice by her hair. Kaleah screamed and cried. Other fae drifted onto the ice, voices already raised together. One of the players tried to run away. A fae held her back.

The fae chanted; Alvarie cut the baby out of Kaleah on center ice; magic whipped through their hair, bodies; the baby never breathed; and Kaleah passed out from pain, the cold.

Players stood shivering, pressed against one another, and Kent stood alone with the warmth of magic. The fae sewed Kaleah together with enough magic to put her in the next game. They made her play 28 minutes.

She collapsed on the ice, minutes before the game ended. She died with her face on the ice and inches from Kent's skates. The fae dragged her away. Magic leached from her body howled through the air.

Kent scored the game winning goal in the next minute.

Kent got a week of warmth and two weeks of satiated hunger.

Kent also got the C.

*

The fae took Leddy their next loss, four games later.

Leddy turned and shouted at Kent as the fae dragged him to center ice. The stands went quiet, and then the fae started to chant. Leddy struggled and punched. The fae spoke and drove magic into his body. Leddy crumpled. Saliva dribbled from his mouth as he tried to spit on the ice. He could barely tilt his head up enough to look at Kent and tell him, “That was my kid you killed.” The fae yanked Leddy to his feet and slid a blade of magic through his heart.

Kent didn’t say the fae would’ve killed the baby as soon as it was born anyway. As he had been telling himself every day since Kaleah died. Mercy killing, Kent didn’t say while heat simmered in his bones, and the fae’s voices swelled.

The fae starved them for two weeks after that. Punishment for Leddy fighting back on the ice.

The Aces lost every game for the next four weeks, starving, sluggish—the roster turned over.

All the players died one way or another.

Except for Kent.

He got lucky.

*

Kent wears layers under his jersey. It makes him slower, his movements harder. A thin cowl keeps his neck warm, but it still feels like he's choking sometimes, when he snaps his head, twists to track the puck, his teammates. And it's not warm enough.

But you're alive, Kent tells himself to remember as the minutes countdown and the Aces fight to get on the board. He pokes the puck onto his stick, slaps it to the net. The goalie bats it away, again.

They try again.

They fail again.

They lose.

Bells pushes out of her net, hurries to Raz. They're talking too low, too fast for Kent to hear, the wind whipping past his ears. Cold, dry, endless.

One of the refs shouts. Kent flinches, his eyes squeeze shut. When he opens them at a muffled cry, the refs’ finger isn't pointing at him.

James is peeling off layers. His helmet, cowl, scarf, two pairs of gloves. His jersey, a jacket, three shirts. The fae doesn't give him time to strip down further, save the little bit of clothing the humans have. Instead, the ref halts with a sharp cut of ice in front of James. The fae tugs him to the center of the ice.

The stands fall silent. The moon paints a beam along James’ skin. Kent hears Devon crying then. Though you couldn't tell under all his layers. Just sniffs and hiccuping breaths. He's skating after James’ stuff, picking it up. He holds it close and doesn't look at Kent for a second.

The fae start to chant then, voices battling each other, crashing harmonies and flattening octaves.

Kent looks away when the fae strikes.

*

Jack knew a lot about the world before the fae. He didn’t talk about it much, but when he did his eyes lit up, and he spoke for hours. His words quick and quiet, tucked between one breath and another.

Jack talked about cars that moved humans over long distances instead of magic. He talked about chemicals that made light and machines that made warmth. Jack told Kent in a hushed, wistful voice about rain and about clouds—water that clung together in the air, floated in the sky.

“Yeah?” Kent asked. “How I know you’re not just making shit up.”

Jack laughed then. “You don’t. I don’t even know if it’s true—but I read about it. Sounds great, doesn’t it? I’d give anything for a heater.”

“Heater?”

“Heats things. Like a fire, but better.”

“No shit.”

Jack dropped his head onto Kent’s chest, and Kent ran his fingers through Jack’s hair. Long enough to cover his ears, keep it warm. Their breathing evened out, matched one another’s. Kent wondered if their heartbeats synced up, too.

“Do you know why the world changed?” Kent asked and darted a glance to some teammates who had made their own pile of warmth closer to the fire. Kent slipped his other arm around Jack, pulled him closer.

“The fae,” Jack said.

“Yeah, but like, what about them? What did they do? How did they do it?”

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know if anyone knows. One day the world froze over, and then it never thawed.”

*

Devon claims James’ salt when they get back to the compound. There isn't much, but Devon, choking on his own breath, repairs the broken line in front of the only door to their ramshackle, one-room building.

Kent doesn't know if the fae can't actually cross the line of salt, or if they just pretend it's their one weakness. If Kent had anything to bet, he'd bet on the later.

If Kent’s learned anything, it’s that nothing can stop them.

*

The players wrap around one another, almost close enough to the fire to singe. Devon still can't look at Kent, but Raz spits in Kent's direction on Devon’s behalf. “Pretty shitty that when James gets mad at you he ends up dead. You probably threw the fucking game.”

Kent drags his three blankets tighter around him. Kent plays for his fucking life every game. The less chance the fae have to murder him on center ice and reap magic from his blood, the better. He’s fucking lucky it hasn’t happened yet. “I don’t get a say,” he says. “They don’t listen to me. You all fucking know it.” Kent hears someone start to argue. He snaps, “Bells is probably just relieved it was James and not Raz.” Kent can definitely hear someone start crying, again. Probably Raz.

Kent goes asleep listening to chattering teeth and dreams of Jack in their final year before losses start to mean death.

“Let's run away,” Kent says.

Jack turns serious, solemn. “Okay,” he says.

They start to plan, filling their pockets with salt. Kent never asks exactly where they'll go, but he never doubts Jack has a direction, maybe even a destination, in mind. They curl around one another, fall asleep in a circle of salt and with freedom in their throats.

Then Kent wakes up, and Jack is gone. Their salt gone, too. The dream twists into a nightmare.

The fae beat Jack to death, body breaking, snapping. Kent cries and stumbles toward the body.

The fae kill Jack again. They strip him and drop him into a hole in the ice. He plunges into water, scrapes his fingers along the bottom of inches-thick ice. He shouts for help, for Kent. He chokes on water.

The fae burn Jack—he screams himself hoarse.

They feed magic down his throat until tears leak from his eyes and blood from his skin.

Kent jerks awake. He lays there breathing too fast, too shallow. He swallows hard. Kent rolls to his feet, grabs his coat from the floor. He shrugs into a second jacket as the sun rises.

Never found Jack’s body, Kent reminds himself. Never found the body, he thinks. Kent thinks, James is dead. A new teammate, a new chance to find Jack.

Kent pulls on his second pair of gloves. He slips another hat on his head, steps into another pair of pants. He moves carefully around still sleeping teammates, over the line of salt at the door and goes to find James’s body.

Kent walks along frozen ground, breathing into his hands to keep the cold out of his throat. He doesn’t look left or right at the few fae slinking home in the sun’s glare.

Kent makes his way down to the practice ice, walks past it to the brittle, torn field of cacti. Kent goes into the frozen wasteland and doesn’t look at the naked bodies of old players, teammates. Some of them have lost parts of themselves, taken by wolves, maybe something else. Some of the bodies sunk into the needles on the cacti until they froze in place, half upright, almost standing.

Jack once told him humans used to bury their dead, but the ground is too hard now. If there was open water by the Aces (“Oceans, lakes,” Jack described to him.), Kent thinks he might try to drown the bodies, hide them. Anything but this. Kent doesn’t know most of their names. Didn't know most of them when they were alive.

Kent keeps walking until he finds James’s body. When he does, Kent kneels down next to it and unwinds the tape from James’ shins. He peels James’ skates and socks and pants off his stiff body. Kent leaves the boxers, his fingers too numb. Kent knocks off frozen blood that had leaked down from James's chest. It never got a chance to stain the clothing. Good as new.

“Are you cold?” Kheelan asks.

Kent freezes, takes a slow breath, and then glances up at Kheelan. Kheelan looks like Alvarie. Pointed teeth, too thin skin, too pale eyes, too cold fingers, but his cheekbones are sharper, eyes wider. He keeps his hair short, and he always waits for Kent the day after a loss. Knows Kent will look for the body in the desert.

“Always cold,” Kent says, keeping on script.

Kheelan makes a noise. “I can help you with that.”

Kent stands back up, James’s clothing bundled in his arms, the skates tied and hanging over his shoulder. They bump against him as he moves. “Don’t have anything today.” Kent starts walking back through the desert, his footsteps heavy, dragging. “But you should give me some magic as a show of good faith,” he says, kidding because the fae don’t ever give out magic for free.

Kheelan trails behind him, laughs. “I like you.”

Kent doesn’t say how much he doesn’t like Kheelan. Doesn’t like any of the fae. How he’d kill them in a minute if he thought he’d survive doing it. If Kent thought it would get him Jack. Instead Kent says, “I am pretty great.”

Kheelan smiles and darts in front of Kent. Kent jerks backwards. Kheelan slides a hand against Kent’s cheek. Kent freezes. Kheelan’s hand is warm. Kheelan presses a trick of magic against Kent’s chin and forces him to look up, look at Kheelan's dark, wide eyes, pale skin stretched almost translucent across blue veins. Kent tries to keep his breath even, but he knows it picks up. Terror starts to weave its way through his body. Kheelan hasn’t done anything to him before, but that doesn’t mean shit. 

The magic drops from Kent’s chin, slides into his neck, spreads down into his body with a wave of heat. Magic never comes without a price. Kent keeps his head tilted up, and Kheelan leans in, his breath frosts over Kent’s face. Kent’s heart hammers in his chest. Kheelan’s hand presses down the line of Kent’s throat, over his blunky clothing, stops over his heart.

“This,” Kheelan tells Kent. “This is what we’re always after.” Death, Kent doesn't say when Kheelan doesn't elaborate. Blood.

Kent doesn’t move until Kheelan backs away, tells Kent to go back with James’s clothing. Kent digs his fingers into the fabric and does as Kheelan says, breath coming too short. When Kheelan is out of sight, relief pours through Kent’s body until he remembers warmth does, too.

*

James’ replacement arrives at the first glimmer of the moon, hours after the warmth Kheelan gave Kent wore away. The Aces are out on the ice, practicing, listening to Kent shout and shove them in different directions. Kent only notices the new player when Devon freezes, looks behind Kent. Kent twists around, and Alvarie shoves their new teammate out. They stumble before finding their feet, blades digging into the ice.

Alvarie looks at them and says, “Game tomorrow.”

Kent skates over to them, her. She has dark skin with darker freckles. Red hair curls out from under her hat. “Parser,” he says. “Captain.”

“Amani. Right-wing.”

Kent nods sharply, and they skate. She fits in alright. Not like James did, but she does well enough. She’ll get there. Might not die the first time on the ice.

*

Practice ends, and Kent takes Amani aside before the others can tell her to stay away from him. He asks if she knows Zimms: dark hair, blue eyes. Quiet. Strong. Warm, Kent wants to say, but doesn’t. Kent can almost feel Jack standing behind him in that moment, arms slipped around his waist, chin tucked into his neck. But Kent's too cold for Jack to actually be there. His back isn't warm. His waist isn't warm. His neck is cold.

Amani looks at him without a word. Her eyes latch onto his and hold them. She narrows her eyes.

“I didn't think you would,” Kent finally says. Shivers start wrapping around his body, sweat cooling under his clothing. The cold, cutting air shrieks through him. Kent stomps his feet to get his blood moving again. “Knew it was a long shot, but I always ask.” Kent starts walking away.

“I know him.”

Kent freezes. Know. Not knew. Kent turns. Amani has her stick dangling in one hand and her other clutches a puck. Kent forces his mouth to move. “What?”

“Jack,” she says instead of, “Zimms.”

Kent steps closer to her, a little unsteady, unsure. “You saw him?”

“Know him,” she corrects, eyes darting around them.

Kent looks around, too. No fae. He licks his lips. “You—”

“Do you have salt?” Amani blurts out.

Kent blinks. “What? No. Why would I have…” Kent shakes his head. He doesn't tell Amani it doesn't work anyway. That the fae stole Jack out of a circle of it. “Do you need salt?”

Amani says, “No.” Suddenly flushed from what little Kent can see of her face, nervous.

“So Jack—”

“I've got to go,” Amani says. Kent clamps his mouth shut. She starts walking toward the desert, where the fae scattered torn, devoured bodies around on frozen, broken cacti. Kent doesn't bother telling her she's going the wrong way. She’ll figure it out.

*

Kent sits down next to Amani in the locker room. Caits says, “She already fucking knows better.”

“Tell me about Jack,” Kent says. The fabric over his mouth muffles his voice. He pulls it down to ask again when Amani doesn't respond.

Amani laces up her skates. “Nothing to tell.” Kent is ready to call bullshit when Alvarie slams the door open. Amani is the first to rise, the first out the door, and it's wrong. Kent hurries to catch up, fix it.

*

They lose that night, and Kent looks away when Marty, small and quiet, is chosen. He doesn't start shedding his clothes beforehand.

They'll be new tears in them when Kent picks them up when the sun rises.

*

Kent corners Amani after the game, sequesters her away from the small, barely there fire in the room. The other players look away from them. “You need to tell me about Jack,” Kent says low, fast to Amani.

She steps away. Kent grabs her arm, yanks her back. She slaps at him. He catches her wrist.

“Not until you tell me,” he demands.

She doesn't spit, but Kent sees it working in her mouth. She shakes off his hand and glares at him. She has burning, amber eyes.

“How do you know him?” Kent asks.

“He didn't mention you once,” she says. She spits then. “So I have nothing to say to—”

“Tell me!” he shouts. His voice echoes in silence. The fire cackles, laughs at him. Kent flushes. “Please,” he says softer, quieter. “Just tell me if he’s okay.”

Amani scowls, takes a step closer. “He’s more than okay,” she snarls. She balls her hands into fists, drops her voice further. “He got out.”

Relief swarms Kent. And then anger flares up.

They were supposed to get out together.

*

Kent bends down and peels off Marty’s balaclava first. Then the scarf. Kent starts a pile next to him. He drops his hands to the bottom of the jersey, starts to pull it off. He doesn’t get far. The blood soaked through the layers, froze them together, in place. Kent tugs. Fuck. He tries again, his heartbeat picking up.

Kent needs to get the jersey off.

He needs to take it back, give it to Marty’s replacement. Needs the jersey for the next player who comes in or they won’t be able to play. And if they can’t play, then everyone else has to play longer, and fuck. Kent can’t double shift anymore. He is so fucking old. He can’t do that. He can’t keep doing this. Keep skating, keep hoping it’s not him the fae will take. Keep hoping someone is going to tell him about Jack, about where the fuck he is and why the fuck he isn’t here and why he’s gone and—and—

“Need help?” Kheelan asks.

Kent freezes. Tells himself to get it together. He holds his breath for a beat, then lets it out slowly. He does it once, twice more. Kent does not need, does not want Kheelan’s help. Magic comes with a price, and Kent still hasn’t paid for the warmth from last time, doesn’t know what the price was. Doesn’t want to think about when, how Kheelan will come to collect. “No,” Kent finally says.

He starts to pound on Marty’s chest to dislodge the frozen blood over his heart. One blow after another. Kent doesn’t glance at Marty’s face. Skin almost as white as a fae’s, lips pale and cracked, eyes open because Kent hadn’t thought to close them. They’re green. A sharp, dark green. Kent hits Marty over and over and over until something gives, cracks.

Kent slides his hands under the jersey again and tries to take it off. It won’t move. It won’t fucking—

“Looks like you could use some help.”

Kent grits his teeth. “I don’t need any help.” He rips the jersey up. Fucking finally. He bends back down to the ground and tucks his hands into one of the arm holes. He pulls it apart, and the seam down the side tears open from messy, weak stitching where the jersey has been torn off and reused too many times. Kent does the other side. He flips the jersey up, tugs the collar over Marty’s head. With a grunt, he jerks the jersey out from under Marty’s body. And Kent's done. The rest of the clothing would be nice, but he can't. He's too tired suddenly. The jersey feels so heavy, and Kent doesn't want to work anymore.

Kent scoops up the scarf and balaclava, bundles them in with the jersey and starts walking back. Kheelan falls into step next to him, laughing. “Much more efficient than before. Remember when you used to cut off their arms to get the jersey off the bodies in one piece?” Kent doesn’t look at Kheelan, tightens his arms on his clothing. “Parser?” Kheelan prompts.

“You live and you learn,” Kent says, stepping around a body half clothed.

Kheelan hums next to him. “What’s going on?” Kheelan asks. “Didn’t you like that we took James last time for you?”

Kent freezes, because—Kent didn't hear that right. “What?” Kent asks as blood starts to drain from his face and chills race through his body. He thought. The sacrifices at the end are random. Random. They have nothing to do with Kent, nothing to do with—Kent doesn’t get a say. The deaths just happen. Out of a human’s control, out of their desires, wants, fears.

“We took him for you. Thought it would be good. You could always ask next time,” Kheelan continues. He turns around. “Let us know what you think. Who you want to live or die.” Kheelan walks back to Kent, presses a cold hand against Kent’s face, and shoves warmth through his body. Kheelan keeps his hand there, and his eyes drop to Kent’s lips. Kheelan leans forward. Kent jerks back. No. Kheelan doesn't move closer.

Kent squeezes his eyes shut, stands still for however long it takes the heat to fade, and tells himself to forget about this.

He doesn’t actually get a choice.

The fae are lying.

It doesn’t matter what he wants.

*

The Aces win their third game in a row. Raz and Bells laugh into each others’ mouths with happiness while the fae choose a player from the other team. Kent doesn’t watch them choose. Never does.

“I thought I was going to die,” Amani says breathlessly to Devon.  
  
Kent shivers next to them, twists his head away from the howling wind. His clothing is too thin, his body too cold.

“Jack—” Amani starts to say, and then cuts her eyes to Kent, cuts herself off. She twists closer to Devon, presses her lips against his ear. Kent watches her lips move, but can’t catch what she says. He burns with anger. That Devon gets to know something about Jack. Kent slams his stick against the ice.

*

Devon kills another elk. Kent smells the cooked meat in the room, sees blood still on Devon’s clothes. The fire burns brighter from the fat. Devon didn’t shake the blood off before he got somewhere warm. It soaked into his shirt. Kent is mostly relieved—it promises more warmth for him.

Kent goes out looking for Alvarie, shivering in the too, too cold. When the sun starts to sink and the fae begin to wake, Amani finds him and stumbles to his side.

“I did it,” she tells him breathlessly, quietly. “I killed the elk,” she lies.

Kent shakes his head, tightens his jaw.

“I killed it,” she continues. She doggedly follows Kent as he keeps walking. “I sawed its throat and skinned it.” Kent shakes his head at her. Every fucking word out of her mouth is a lie. “I was hungry,” she pretends. Kent clenches his jaw. “So hungry and cold. I wanted warmth—”

“Amani,” he snaps at her. “Stop it. We both fucking know who did it.”

Amani stumbles for a second. Then she bites back. “Does it really matter?” Amani grabs Kent’s arm and pulls him to her side. Her fingers tighten with every word. “You get your warmth either way. You get your magic no matter who takes the fall. Devon is going to die if you say it’s him—”

Kent scowls in disgust. “I’m not going to lie for—”

“I’ll tell you about Jack,” she says.

Kent stops. That’s.

Amani backs away from Kent, raises her chin. Her red hair escapes from the edges of her hat. “That’s what you want, right? You tell those fucking fae I did it, and I’ll tell you about Jack.”

*

Kent finds Alvarie and tells her, “Amani killed an elk.” Alvarie looks at him, and Kent’s stomach twists. Alvarie knows he’s lying. Alvarie is going to haul him off. Slaughter him.

But then Alvarie laughs, and her fingers press against Kent’s jaw. “You did good,” Alvarie tells him, and then Kheelan is there next to her, replacing her fingers with his own. Alvarie twists away with a gust of magic, and Kent’s breath drops out of him, comes too fast and too short. Fuck. Alvarie is going to see Amani, know Kent lied. Know Amani didn’t kill the elk.

“What are you worried about?” Kheelan asks, and his fingers slide down to Kent’s chest. Warmth floods Kent’s body. It loosens his muscles. “We’re not going to kill her the first time around,” Kheelan says. He presses his other hand against Kent’s hip. Kent shifts his weight into it, towards the heat. “Three days,” Kheelan says when Kent doesn’t answer. “Feeling generous.”

*

Devon doesn’t ask Kent where Amani is, but he looks for her in the locker room. On the ice.

Then Caits says, “Why aren’t you wearing more?” And Raz scowls, noticing too. “You got shit on Amani, huh?” Devon whips his head around, skates towards them.

Kent snarls and goes to meet him. Kent shoves his finger against Devon’s chest. He wants to shout, but drops his voice into a whisper, too low for the wind to catch his words and send them elsewhere, “She took the fall for you.” Kent skates closer to Devon until their breaths almost mix. “If the fae catch you shitting they’ll know what really happened. And neither of you will live until tomorrow.”

*

Amani isn’t inside the room when the rest of the Aces get back, exhausted. The fire is out. They need to relight it. Kent doesn't wait to see if Devon uses the fat from the elk. Kent goes out looking for Amani like he’s never done before. Kheelan is outside.

Kheelan wants to know what Kent’s doing outside again.

“Amani,” Kent says.

Kheelan hums. “Do you want to watch what they’re doing to her?”

Kent doesn’t answer, but falls into step next to Kheelan, who has started to walk into the center of the frozen, icy town. Kent normally avoids it. Magic whips through the air there, and the fae look at him, reach out and touch him. Once, one even nicked his skin, drew blood and magic in the same breath.

“Haven’t done this before,” Kheelan observes, and Kent’s jaw tightens.

*

“You going to ask us to stop?” Kheelan asks, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. His pupils are wide, soaking in the moonlight. He breathes out icy air towards Kent, and Kent flinches away, even though it doesn’t cool his skin. He’s warm, so warm.

A fae Kent recognizes but doesn’t know is whipping Amani with a coil of magic that shimmers in the moonlight. Her body jerks. She screams, cries.

“Alvarie said thirty will be good enough.” Kheelan threads his fingers together as he watches, a faint smile tugging at the edges of his lips. The ends of his hair begin to waver with magic. Heady, powerful. Blooming out from the whipping post. Like it floods out from sacrifices on the ice. Blood magic the fae feast on, sustain on. Kheelan drifts away from Kent, toward the whipping post, the magic.

When the fae finish, Amani drops to the ground, breath no longer frosting the air. Kent waits for the fae to leave before he walks down to her. He wraps her in his jacket. He carries her, drags her back towards their room. Her eyes flutter open every so often. He gets her there, and then he lets the others take care of her. Devon wraps around her, tugs her towards the fire that has never burned so bright before. It smells like fat.

*

Kent wakes when Amani sits down next to him. “Parser?” she asks softly, quietly. Her voice is hoarse. From screaming, probably.

“I’m awake,” Kent says, but doesn’t sit up. He twists from his side to his back, looking up at the ceiling. He glances over at Amani, and she isn’t looking at him. Her eyes are tied to her fingers holding a bag of salt. She opens it and pinches some out. She sprinkles it over her feet. She dusts Kent.

She clears her throat, but her voice still comes out scratchy. “What do you want to know about Jack?”

Kent’s breath catches. He tries to hide it, not sure if he manages. Everything, Kent wants to tell Amani, but it’s not—He doesn’t think she would. But he says it anyway.

Amani laughs something dark and says, “That’s not how this works.”

“What is he doing now?”

Amani doesn’t answer for one breath, two. Kent looks over at her, and she’s staring at him.

“So?” he demands. A deal is a deal.

“He’s living in a city ringed in salt,” Amani says. “It's the start of our revolution.”

*

They lose three times in a row. Lose three players Kent barely knows. Kent wonders if this is Kheelan’s doing, keeping the killings away from the core of the Aces. He goes to gather up their clothing, tugs it off their stiff, frozen bodies. Like statues. Perfectly sculpted. Kheelan watches him every time, pushes magic into his skin every time. “A gift,” Kheelan says, even though Kent knows better.

*

They get three more players.

Kent doesn’t ask if they know Jack, because Amani does. Amani does but won’t tell him anything more. The start of a revolution—Jack.

*

Kent’s stomach aches. He presses a hand against it. It doesn’t help much. Bells’ stomach growls. “Fuck the fae,” she mutters low to the locker room, Raz sitting pressed against her. The fae didn’t feed them magic that morning. “Do we know why we’re starving? Parser, you do shit?”

“I’m fucking suffering with you,” Kent snaps.

Alvarie opens the locker room, and others choke back their words. Kent stands first, leaves first. Alvarie slams the door shut. Kent freezes. The rest of his team is still inside. Alvarie found out he lied to her. Alvarie knows Amani didn’t kill the elk, and Kent is going to die.

Alvarie steps towards Kent, and Kent stumbles backwards, unsteady on his skates. He backs up until Alvarie snarls and grabs his jersey, tugs him to her. Kent looks away from her eyes, squeezes his shut. He doesn’t want to see her kill him. He is so fucking weak. “Look at me!” Alvarie snaps, and Kent doesn’t open his eyes. Alvarie slaps him. Kent’s eyes snap open. She snarls. “Who stole from us?”

Kent can’t move. He can’t look away from Alvarie’s dead, cold eyes.

“Who stole— “

“It wasn’t me,” Kent blurts out, gasping for breath. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about—”

Alvarie jerks her hand up. Kent flinches. “Find out who stole from us,” she tells him. She drops her hand. “Or we’ll string you up instead.”

Kent stumbles away, and Alvarie lets the other players out. They hang back as Kent steps onto the ice first. His blood pounds in his ears. He grips his stick too hard. Tells himself to relax as he laps the ice, passing the fae staring hungrily at him, at the magic he’ll bring them. He passes Bells as she cuts up the ice in front of her net.

Devon stops sharply in front of Kent, and Kent barely keeps from colliding into him. Kent slams a hand into the boards. “What are you—”

Devon comes close to Kent, like he never does. Voice muffled by fabric, he asks, “What did the fae want?”

Kent knows then. Knows Devon did it. Kent doesn’t ask what Devon stole, because it doesn’t matter to him. Kent has his culprit, and Kent is not dying tonight.

Kent grunts and peels away from Devon, only to have Amani barrel into him, push him against the glass. He grunts and shoves her off without much effort. She winces and then straightens. Yesterday, Kent watched Devon carefully peel off her shirt, sprinkle stinging salt onto the lashes on her back, trying to stop the bleeding. “Parser,” she says. “I did it.”

Kent laughs. He shakes his head. He doesn’t fucking believe this. Amani lining up to take the fall for Devon again. She doesn’t even fucking know him. She’s been with the Aces for maybe a month. Kent has been with them for years and has seen hundreds of teammates come and go. He’s been the constant. The single fucking survivor for three years.

“Parser,” she spits. “Listen to me—”

“He’s going to die,” Kent snaps. “For whatever stupid shit that—”

Amani ducks in close. She shoves her helmet against Kent’s. They’re both breathing hard, even though they’re not moving, haven’t been moving a lot. “I’ll tell you more about Jack,” Amani says. “I’ll tell you more about Jack if you tell the fae it was me.”

Kent draws back, shaking his head. He pushes off with one skate. “You’re going to die before you get to—”

“He grew up,” Amani whispers fiercely, snaking a hand out to grab him, to pull him back. She slides her body close to him. Kent almost feels heat radiating from her. “Jack cut his hair from what you probably remember. He still skates. I don’t know why. I’d never fucking do this again if I could. But maybe he has to, a feeling in his bones driving him, memories in his muscles he needs to remember. Things he can’t bear to forget. Like you. He probably remembers you in the movement, with the movement. Why he skates. So he doesn’t forget who’s out here. Who needs him. Doesn't forget you.”

“Yeah?” Kent asks, voice hoarse, too far gone.

Amani’s eyes blaze. “He found others who’d gotten out, but they were ragged, run down by constantly running, hiding. So Jack stole salt from the fae’s stores, ringed an area three miles wide, made a town the fae can’t enter. He’s the one who made it possible to live after escaping this, not just survive—tell the fae it was me.”

*

“It was Amani,” Kent tells Alvarie after the game they barely won, when she’s sliding magic into his stomach to keep him alive. He shivers in the cold and rubs his hands together as his hunger dissipates. They are outside their barely standing home. No one has had a chance to light the fire inside yet.

Alvarie’s eyes flash, and Kent flushes as heat blooms through his body. Alvarie doesn’t say good job, doesn’t tell him for how long the warmth will last. She moves onto the next player, to sustain them, but not to heat them.

Amani is next.

Alvarie rips Amani’s hat off of her head. The fae grabs Amani’s red, curling hair and yanks. Amani goes down with a scream. Players scatter back, break the line Alvarie was moving down. Kent swallows. Raz starts to scream.

“Stop,” Amani begs Alvarie from the ground, hands in her hair to relieve the pressure. “Please, please don’t—” Alvarie’s hair whips up in a stream of magic. It thunders through Amani’s body. Amani shrieks. She convulses and twists into herself. Amani’s clothing whips around her in the still air. Kent’s hair stands on end. Amani sobs.

Devon jerks forward, and fuck. Kent slams an arm out to hold him back.

“You’ll make it worse,” Kent says, like he doesn’t already know Alvarie drags Amani to her death. “Worse than you’ve already made it.” Devon’s face twists into maybe something regretful. But who knows. Kent shoves Devon backwards. The players part, and Alvarie drags Amani away. Amani loses her voice before Kent loses sight of her, tears frozen on her cheeks.

Raz collapses onto the ground. Bells drops down around her, slides her arms around her partner. “It’s okay,” Bells whispers. “I’m still here. We’re still here.” Bells tucks Raz’s head under her chin, away from the cold. “We’re okay.”

Kent did that for Jack once. Held him like that. Before the draft, a couple of days before. Jack stumbled to the ground, breath coming too fast, too short. His face flushed, and he started peeling off layers. “Too warm,” he said. “Kenny, Kenny I’m too warm.” Kent scrambled to strip Jack out of his layers. Jackets, hat, scarf, gloves, sweatshirt, shirts. They tossed them aside, and Kent wrapped around Jack, tugged him in close against the cold. Warm or not, he’d freeze anyway. They’d seen it happen before. Hot flashes that killed off teammates. “It’s not going to work,” Jack told Kent, cried. “It’s not going to—”

“It’s okay,” Kent said, and Jack said over and over, “We’re not going to make it out. It’s not going to work.”

“It’s okay,” Kent said between each of Jack’s words. He clutched Jack tighter as if that would change anything. As if holding Jack close could change the world, could make the fae go away, stop time, stop hockey. “We’re going to make it. We’re okay. It’s going to work.” Then Kent woke up, and Jack was gone.

Kent closes his eyes. Feels Jack’s arms around his stomach in a memory he shifts into. Jack’s arms tighten, pull Kent in close enough for Jack to slip his chin over Kent’s shoulder. His breath ghosts over Kent’s cheek. Jack presses his dry lips against Kent’s neck. The ache of want burns through Kent, carves holes in his stomach and the weight of Jack is gone. Never there. But one day Jack could be there again, the two of them pressed up against one another, leaning against each other.

Kent could find Jack. Fuck. Amani knows where he is. Amani could get Kent back to Jack, to a town three miles wide, ringed by salt. No one else but Amani could do it. No one else knows about it. No one else. Kent can’t let them kill Amani, he realizes suddenly, sharply. He needs her. He needs her to find Jack.

Kent turns away from the rest of the Aces, heat in his bones. No one calls him back. He hurries under moonlight toward where the fae live, in buildings that glisten and where magic runs a constant breeze through the air.

Kent doesn’t have a plan until he does, the currents of magic starting to tug at his clothing. Kent needs to find Kheelan, who told him once that Kent could have a choice in who died, who lived. There’ll be a price. He doesn’t know what it is, but Kent knows in that moment he’ll take it. Anything to save Amani right now, to save Kent’s only chance at Jack. He squares his shoulders and quickens his pace.

Kent doesn’t have to look for long before Kheelan falls into step beside him. Kent stops, and Kheelan does too. “Do you want to watch again?” Kheelan asks.

“No,” Kent says. “You told me once,” Kent starts and then can’t finish. He clears his throat, tries to ignore the way his heart starts to pound. He blurts out, “You can’t let them kill Amani.”

Kheelan glances around and then steps closer to Kent. Kent backs away. Faster and faster. Kent stumbles into a wall of ice. Magic spins through the air, tighter than before. It raises goosebumps along Kent’s arm and drives chills up his back. “You can’t let them kill Amani,” Kent struggles to say, voice coming too fast, too high. Kheelan is already too close. “You can’t let them kill—”

“I heard you the first time,” Kheelan cuts in. “I heard you the fucking first time. How dare you—”

“You told me once—”

“I know what I said!” Kheelan shouts. Kent chokes back his next words, swallows them down. In his chest, neck, wrists, Kent feels the thud of his own blood. Mortality. Magic for fae but not for humans. Kheelan leans in closer, drops his voice. “Tell me why you need her.”

Kent shakes his head. He knows he can’t tell Kheelan how Kent needs her to find Jack, find someone he knew from before he came to the Aces, from before hockey meant death. Kent can’t tell Kheelan that Kent has plans to take Amani and her truth and run however far he needs to run to find Jack and his city ringed in salt. If Kent knows anything, it’s how to survive. And he will not live if he tells the fae the truth.

“This is the deal, Parser,” Kheelan says lowly, pressing a hand against the wall behind Kent’s head, barricading him there. “You need to tell me why you want to keep her alive.”

Kent nods, a jerky movement of confirmation. Then Kent starts to lie. He tells Kheelan him and Amani are old friends, more than that really. Kent looks off to the side, towards a building of dark, opaque ice shining in the moonlight. Kent stares at the smooth sheet of ice and lies. For years, Kent lies to Kheelan, he’s been looking for her. They’re finally together again and Kent. Kent can’t imagine losing her again. Twice in one lifetime.

Kheelan drops his arm. Kent flinches. Kheelan leans back, and he laughs. Kheelan laughs and laughs. When Kent almost starts to join, the laughter vanishes. Blood rushes from Kent’s face. “Tell the truth,” Kheelan demands.

“Okay,” Kent says. “Okay.” Kent takes a shaking breath, looks up at Kheelan and lies about how Devon asked him to save Amani. Kheelan growls out how he doesn’t believe Kent for a second, and then Kent lies about how they need her for the team, how they won’t be able to win without her. Kheelan’s face darkens. Kent scrambles to lie again. And again. His breath turns ragged. Magic starts to move quicker, harsher around him, picking up Kent’s breath and stealing it or pushing too much down his throat. Kheelan growls something low in the back of his throat. Kent keeps working through lies, compelled to talk until Kheelan believes him, because Kent needs Amani. Fuck. He needs her so badly because she is his key to Jack, and Kent—Kent cannot lose him. Not again. Fuck. Kent won’t survive if he loses Jack again. Kent shutters in a breath. The air twists away from him.

Gone.

Kent gasps. His hands slide to his throat, then clutch frantically in front of him, like they could capture air. Kheelan takes a step away, a breath. Kent looks at him with wide, panicked eyes. He didn’t think Kheelan would do this—didn’t think—Kheelan drives magic down Kent’s throat.

Kent drops to the ground. Words claw their way up the inside of Kent. “Jack Zimmermann,” Kent hears himself say, blood and words tumbling out of his lips. “She knows Jack Zimmermann.” Kent spits red out, and blood falls from his mouth. Kheelan shoves magic deeper into Kent’s body. Kent sinks to the ground, crying over words that buck from his throat. How he knew Jack. How he loves Jack. How they were going to run away together. How they were going to survive together. How Jack ate an apple once. How Jack knew about the world before the fae—about heaters and clouds and cars. How Kent thought they would make a life together. How Kent still wants Jack. Still needs him like he has never needed anything else and that is the only reason Kent is still alive. To find Jack again. And that is why Kent needs Amani. Why Amani can’t die.

“Because Amani knows.”

Kent drops forward. His arms catch him, barely. They shake and hurt and struggle. His body convulses. He coughs blood and the residue of magic up his lacerated throat. Kent catches one breath, two. He winces at the air moving down his throat, but then he forces himself back up to his feet. Pushing down the fear of death, death, death.

Kent finds Kheelan breathing almost as hard as himself and staring at him. Kent wants to look away, but he can’t. He needs Jack. Kent wants—“So?” Kent croaks, spits more blood on the ground. It hurts, everything hurts. Magic doesn’t shift through the air anymore, doesn’t tug at his hair, clothing. “You gonna do it?” Kent fights the urge to sag against the ground. To look away, cry. “The truth for her life, right? That was the deal.” Even though. Fuck. Kent’s pretty sure he’s dead, killed by his own voice. But Kent grits his teeth, tilts his chin up. Keeps fighting.

Kheelan doesn’t move for a long moment. “Go back,” he finally says. “I’ll get her for you.”

Kent’s knees buckle, and he drops onto the frozen ground. Kheelan leaves, and it’s a long time before Kent can get back to his feet.

*

Kheelan drops Amani in front of Kent, outside their one room home. She hits the ground like old, used rags. Lifeless. Kent makes an aborted movement towards her. His hand outstretched, foot forward, Kent tears his gaze from Amani and looks up at Kheelan.

“She’s alive,” Kheelan says.

Kent finishes his step toward Amani. He kneels down by her side and starts to work his hands under her. She doesn’t move, mutter. He grunts as he lifts her, arms straining. He stands and starts when Kheelan is still there. He isn’t sure why. Kent shifts Amani in his arms. Kheelan watches them, and Kent pulls Amani tighter against him. She’s someone he’s finally saved. But also, also she’s his link to Jack. And. Kent can’t let Kheelan take that away from him. Except Kheelan knows about Jack, which means Kent might not live long enough to find him. Might not live long enough for Amani to wake up. But if Kheelan hasn’t killed him yet, that probably means he won’t, but if Alvarie learns about Jack… “Are you going to tell Alvarie?”

Kheelan’s eyes flash. “She let Amani—”

“About Jack,” Kent cuts him off, and then holds his breath.

Kheelan takes a step forward, and Kent steps back. Keeps as much space between them as he can, like always. “I haven’t—I haven’t decided yet,” Kheelan says.

Kent shakes his head. Rocks from his heels to his toes and shifts his grip on Amani. He licks his lips and says, “If there’s a price. A price I can pay so you don’t. Let me know what it is.” Kent nods sharply, done saying what he meant to say. He turns his back on the fae and hurries toward the team's building, light leaking from between the crooked boards, Amani limp in his arms.

*

Amani is next to the fire, her thin body laid out, piled under all the blankets Kent could get his hands on. The other players cautiously move closer and then farther away. They want to check on Amani, but they don’t want to come close to Kent. They mutter quickly to each other, and Kent doesn’t bother to listen.

No one confronts Kent about how he went out after Amani like he’s never gone out after any other player. No one says how Kent brought her back like he’s never done before. Kent sits by the fire, Amani doesn’t wake, and the moon rises.

“Parser.” Kent flinches away from the fire and looks up at Devon. Devon shifts his eyes away, looks at Amani. He crouches down next to Kent and reaches out to press a hand against Amani’s shoulder. Then her stomach. Devon presses his hand against Amani’s cheek and then two fingers against her throat. He waits one breath, two.

Kent closes his eyes. He checked her pulse, too. Weak, but there. Kent doesn’t know what the fae did to Amani, but. Does it really matter?

Devon pulls back his hand and says, “We’ve got to go to the game.”

“Amani—”

Devon shakes his head. “We’ll make sure the line of salt is solid.”

Kent looks back at Amani, at her red hair curling from under her hat. Like fire. Like warmth. He reaches over and tugs the fabric down a little.

“We’re going to lose if you stay,” Devon says. Kent lurches unsteadily to his feet, doesn’t feel the cold as he moves away from the fire, magic thrumming through his body.

*

Amani wakes when the sun starts to go down. “Devon?” she says, but Kent’s the one by her side. Hasn’t left her side. Devon is out doing fuck all, and Kent tells Amani so. She lets out a sigh that turns into a cry, her hands sliding to her sides.

When she finally catches her breath, Kent asks, “What did they do?”

Amani doesn’t answer.

“Anything I can do to help?” Kent tries again. Because the sooner she gets better, the sooner she can tell him about Jack. The sooner he can go find Jack.

“They were going to kill me,” she says finally, slowly. She starts to cough, and then doesn’t stop until she passes out again.

*

Amani can stand by practice time. She moves slowly, but with Devon on one side and Caits on the other, they get her to the practice ice. She ties her own skates, picks up her own stick. Kent tells everyone not to pass to her, not to touch her.

On the way back from practice, Kent takes her weight alone, glares at Devon when he moves towards them. Amani winces. Kent adjusts his grip. They start walking back, slower than any of the other players. When Kent can’t see anyone else, he asks, “Where did you meet Jack?”

“Parser,” Amani says, her voice scratchy. “That’s not how this works.”

“Not how it—” Kent seethes. “I saved your fucking life.”

“I didn’t ask for it!” she spits back. Then she groans and her knees buckle. Kent grits his teeth and heaves her upright. They take a couple more steps together.

“Where is he now?”

“No.”

“Why did you leave him?” Kent demands. His grip tightening on Amani. He saved her life. He saved her goddamn life, and he wants to know, “Where can I find him? How can I find him? I need—”

Amani jerks out of Kent’s grip. She slams into the ground. Kent scowls and goes to pick her up. “No!” she shouts at him, curls away from him. Her teeth start to chatter. “No. Go get Devon. I want Devon.”

“I’m not—”

“Parser,” Amani says without looking at him, her breath short. “If you don’t, I’m never going to tell you anything about Jack ever again. Not a word.”

Kent goes and gets Devon.

*

The moon hasn’t started sinking when someone knocks on the door. Everyone freezes, eyes wide. Never. Never before.

“Parser.”

Kent shoots to his feet. Kheelan. He stumbles to the door. He glances down at the line of salt, and then carefully steps over it and outside. He ignores the stares, the silence. Kent shuts the door.

Kheelan jerks his head, walking away from the building, and Kent steps after him, lengthening his strides. Soon they’re walking side by side, headed not towards town, the bodies, or the practice rink.

“Where are we going?” Kent asks. He shifts his hands into his pockets, a habit to keep them warm but his hands are already warm. Kent takes his hands out of his pockets.

“I’ve thought of the price,” Kheelan says. He glances at Kent, and Kent looks away first, back toward the endless sand. They continue in silence.

“So are you going to tell me?” Kent asks when they hit a point where the air suddenly changes. Gets lighter or thinner. Makes Kent's head spin a little. He steps back into what he knows.

Kheelan glances back. “When we get there.” Kent struggles to close the steps between them then, breath a little shorter.

“Couldn't just magic us wherever, huh?” Kent's teeth chatter, and he forces them to stop. Not quick enough though. Kheelan's freezing hand cups his jaw. Then it heats, and Kheelan starts to push magic into Kent. Kent leans into the touch before catching himself. He jerks back, stumbling half a step.

“Don't have enough for you to add that to the bill,” Kent gasps out.

Kheelan's hand drops, gaze blank, and starts walking again. Kent follows, and his hand presses into his cheek where warmth lingers. Kent's throat clenches, and then he follows Kheelan.

When they arrive, it's obvious. There's a cabin standing in the center of nowhere, surrounded by cactuses that almost remind Kent of trees he and Jack used to climb.

Kheelan pauses at the door and nods down to a bag. “Ring the building,” Kheelan says, and heads inside. Kent reaches down for the bag and starts when he finds it's full of salt. Lots of salt. Kent swallows and wonders briefly if he can instead ring himself and never exit the circle. Never face a fae again. Finally die.

But that's not him, and Jack is only as far away as Amani makes him. So Kent picks up the bag, rings the cabin, and then goes inside.

The first thing Kent notices is that the room is warm. Not magic warm, but fire warm, natural warm. There's a fire going in an old fireplace, and a bed. It looks like something from before the cold, like something Jack would describe.

Kheela rises from the only chair in the room, and Kent forces himself not to take a step back.

“What's the price?” Kent asks as Kheelan moves closer, curling a hand around Kent's neck.

“Magic,” Kheelan tells him.

Kent blanches. “Blood.”

Kheelan shakes his head. “More than one way for magic.” He presses his other hand to Kent's chest, and Kent wonders if he can feel Kent's heart. “Not as strong, but…” Kheelan trails off, eyes on Kent's lips, and then Kheelan kisses him.

Kent can't move. Can barely breathe. Kheelan pulls back for a heart beat, and then presses his lips to Kent's again. He repeats it, hand curling around Kent's neck, bunching into the fabric over his heart.

“Kent,” Kheelan mutters. “This is the price.”

The price for Jack. One of the prices for Jack, Kent reminds himself. He kisses back. Light and then harder. Kent makes himself move his arms and lean forward with his body. Kheelan is cold, but Kent tells himself if he keeps going Kheelan will warm up. That's how it should work.

Kheelan doesn't take long to start pulling off Kent's clothes, and Kent can feel the press of magic now, building and starting to billow out of him. Kheelan moans, presses his lips down Kent's chest. His lips are still cold, and Kent closes his eyes, pretending it's Jack on top of him instead and they forgot to stoke the fire.

*

It takes two weeks before Amani skates in a game. She's too slow on the ice, takes hits too frequently. Kent shouts at her, and she stares back, glassy eyed.

A player on the other team comes up behind her, slashes at her throat. Caits shoves her out of the way, and Macher barrels between her and the other player. The player pulls back, and Macher leers.

Devon rushes forward and folds Amani into his arms, showering ice and twisting his back to Macher and the player. The fae want a fight, and so they get one. Macher loses a finger, blood splattering on Devon's back, but the player loses their life.

Amani flicks her gaze to Kent, and he looks away. His body sore, his lips still blue from Kheelan's touch. Kent never stays in the cabin after. He always pulls on his clothing, breaks the circle of salt, and leaves.

The Aces win, and Kent stumbles into the shack of a locker room, breath coming quick, hoping Kheelan doesn't want him tonight. He's keeping Devon's secrets for secrets about Jack, and everytime Kheelan comes for Kent, Kent is afraid the fae will learn every lie he’s told. That Kent's secrets will pour out of him as easily as magic.

*

“Parser,” Amani says, and Kent goes to her, across the tiny room to the barely there fire. Her voice is weak, her breath too shallow. His head still hurts. “Sit.”

Kent drops to the ground next to her, and she tugs a bag of salt into her lap. She glances around, and Kent follows her gaze to the patched roof, to the old, worn door, to Caits drumming her fingers against the floor, to the door again. Except… It’s not the door, it’s below the door, to the thick line of salt that no one ever disturbs anymore. Kent doesn’t know how, but the line has gotten thicker. Someone knows where to find salt. Maybe lots of people know. Kent—he doesn’t know.

“Amani,” Kent mutters, and her eyes snap back to his.

She takes a rattling breath. “I lined the doors of the fae’s houses with salt.”

Heat leaves Kent’s face, and it starts to tingle. “What?”

“I trapped them inside. Not all of them but a few. Enough for them to know. They’re probably going to ask you to break them.”

Kent shakes his head. He gets up and leaves the fire. He takes one lap around the room, two.

“Parser—”

“No!” Kent shouts, spinning to face her. The other Aces freeze. He flushes at the stares but doesn’t care. “No, you didn’t. You’re lying to me—”

“I am not—”

“You can’t even skate properly!” Kent roars, bearing down on her from above. Her pitiful wheezing, weak body. Suddenly Devon is there, shoving Kent backwards. Kent shoves back, shoves harder. Devon stumbles, and Kent starts to swing.

Raz grabs his arm, and Kent grunts. He tries to shake her off, but she won’t let the fuck go. “No,” she tells him. “No,” she repeats. “No.” Bells starts crying in the background, always crying.

Kent sees red. Fuck, he sees so much red. Amani keeps lying, words bubbling out of her mouth, fucking Devon found a backbone he doesn’t know how to use when it matters, and stupid, sobbing Bells—

“Jack!” Amani finally shouts. “Please, Kent, stop. Please tell Alvarie. Tell her it was me, and I’ll. I’ll tell you something new, something—something new. Parser, Jack. Please.” Raz doesn’t let go. “Please,” Amani begs.

Kent drops his arm. Raz lets go. Devon doesn’t move. “Go the fuck away,” Kent snarls to him. “You’re going to get her killed.”

“It’ll be your own damned fault,” Devon says back, stepping closer. The hairs rise on the back of Kent's neck. Devon’s a few inches taller than him, wider than him. “You and your fucking need to know about Jack. If you didn’t go tattling to the fae—”

“We’d all be dead,” Kent cuts across. “We don’t tattle to the fae, and it would take two weeks for them to turn the roster over and kill everyone here.” Devon looks away first. Before walking away, Raz following.

Amani keeps looking up at Kent, red hair plastered against her skin with sweat. Red hair like fire. Fuck. Kent wished her hair burned like fire, was warm like fire. He sits down next to her. “So tell me about Jack,” Kent says.

Amani grabs a fistful of salt and sprinkles it over them. She tosses some behind her back, wincing with the effort. “His mother was a fae,” she says, and Kent’s throat goes tight.

*

Kent drags Amani through the desert. She tries to walk, takes a step or two before giving into her weight. Kent grunts, tightening his grip. She eases onto her feet, bites back a cry, steps, stumbles, almost drags down Kent with her weight. Again, and again. Then Amani gives up, her bare feet blue and frozen with blood. Kent swings her into his arms, and she tucks her head into his neck.

“Jack wants to free everyone,” Amani whispers against his bare skin. The fae pressed heat into his skin for the lie he told them to save Devon, hurt Amani, and learn more about Jack. Kent squeezes his eyes shut for one step, two, waiting for Amani to say more.

She doesn't though. Kent opens his eyes and trudges. His arms strain with her dead weight. His jaw and knees ache from begging Kheelan to save her again. Kent can still taste him in the back of his throat.

*

Kent flies across the ice, dekes with the puck, and then screams. He drops his stick, collapses to his knees, and blood gushes from his forehead. He scrambles to stop the bleeding with his gloves Not now, he thinks. Not after everything.

Kent cries out, a knife slicing across his gloves. He struggles to his feet, clawing at the boards, but can't find purchase, hands slick with blood, freezing against him as it pours from his hands. Kent doesn't have anything to fight with. Thought his team would protect him. Protect their captain who made sure they won games. Kent tenses, eyes squeezed shut to the cheering fae, ready for the killing blow.

It doesn't come. Kent blinks open, blinks away crystals of blood, and the fae crane to look around him. Kent turns, gasping air that doesn't comes.

Devon shifts in front of him, blocking splatters of blood, his view. Kent drops back to the ice, shoves a mangled glove off to cup his forehead, stem the blood. He can barely do it, shaking too much. It freezes on his fingertips.

And then Devon cries out, and the fae start to chant. Devon shifts forward, and Amani pulls him back. She clears Kent's view. Macher is dead on the ground, blood freezing as it runs down his forehead, pools out onto the ice. A knife to the forehead. Like Kent. Just like Kent. Except Macher is dead.

Kent can't stop gasping to breathe, and no one on the team helps him. No one on the team comes for him. Kent struggles up. He fumbles his glove back onto his hand, stoops over for his stick.

The referees drag Macher's body off the ice. “Parser,” Kent hears. “Parser!”

Kent slowly spins, elbows pressed against his thighs, head down.

“The faceoff,” Devon says. “We need you for the faceoff.”

Kent shifts in one direction, and Caits pushes him in another. “Here,” she tells Kent softly. “The faceoff is here.”

Kent loses the puck drop, nausea brimming in his throat. They lose the game. The first game in.

The first game in.

In a long time.

The first game they lose in a long time they lose two players.

Kent closes his eyes when the fae choose from his team. They choose Caits. She starts to cry, turns away from the fae. “Kent,” she pleads. Kent looks away, to the other end of the ice. “Kent, I know you save Amani everytime.” Caits sobs, “Why aren't you saving me? Why can't you save me?” Fae grab her and start to pull her to center ice. She struggles and shrieks. “Kent!” she shouts. The fae stop at center ice. The chants around them rise and rise. Kent thinks he can hear Kheelan between all the voices.

“Kent,” Caits pleads softly, body limp. The glint of the blade of magic in the fae's upraised hand. “You’re our captain. Why aren't you saving me?”

Kent doesn't say the process is random. Doesn't say he can't change the decision. Kent doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. Doesn't think about how if he fucked Kheelan, Kheelan would probably tell the fae to choose someone else.

*

Kent finds Caits’s and Macher’s bodies next to one another on the ground. He drops to his knees next to Macher, grabbing a handful of sand off the ground. He drops it over Macher’s eyes, covering them. They’re blue. Like Kent’s own.

“The cycle continues,” Kheelan says, and Kent flinches. Kent wants him to leave, disappear. Kheelan crouches down next to Kent instead. “Here,” he says. He moves his hands over Macher, magic slips from his fingers, and then the clothing moves into his hands. He drops it in Kent’s lap, and then does the same for Caits.

Kheelan moves to his feet, and Kent can feel his stare. “Let’s go,” Kheelan tells him. “Tired after all that magic.” Kent shivers and doesn't get up. He doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to go. Doesn’t want to be fucked. He slides his fingers through the sand, picks more up. He reaches out to Caits’s body, leaning over Macher’s, and covers her eyes, too. Green.

“Parser,” Kheelan snaps. Kent scrambles to his feet, clutching the clothing to his body, and starts to follow Kheelan to the cottage. His head pounds, hands throb. Something has to give.

*

When Kent returns, clothing in hand and body aching, everyone is huddled outside their shack, freezing in next to no clothing. He doesn’t feel the cold, but the hairs stand straight up on his body. Shivers run down his spine.

“What’s happened,” he asks. He steps closer to the group. He holds out the clothes, the jerseys, and hands grab them. Kent doesn’t watch them get passed out. His eyes find Amani, tucked into the cent of the circle, blooding slipping down her lips, over her bare throat, bare chest. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothing.” No one answers. “Where did the clothing go?” he demands louder. “Where’s her clothing?”

“Alvarie came,” Bells finally mutters. “Alvarie came.” She repeats it again, “Alvarie came.”

Raz’s arms tighten around Bells, try to tug her closer. Raz puts her cheek against Bells’ throat. “Said someone lit a fire and made a hole in the ice.” A big fire, Raz doesn’t say. A hot fire. That would burn and burn and burn. Burn hot, burn fast, burn strong. A fire that would need lots of fat. From killing animals.

Kent looks to Devon, who tucks his head and doesn’t speak a word.

“Rushing water,” Amani says, teeth chattering. “Running water. Moving water. Warmth.”

Kent closes his eyes. Running water, something Jack once told him fae were afraid of.

“I did it,” Amani tells Kent, the group. “Tell them it was me.”

  
*

Kheelan grabs Kent's wrist before he leaves the bed to break the salt circle. Kent freezes, the heat from the cabin at war with the icy layer Kheelan left over his skin, twists into his wrist.

“We both know she's not strong enough anymore for everything you say she gets up to,” Kheelan says.

Kent winces, shakes off Kheelan's hold. “She's faking how much pain she's in.”

“Someone has to die for the melting,” Kheelan tells him, sitting naked on the bed.

“What?” Kent barely gets out, choking with surprise on the word. Kheelan waits, and anger boils in Kent. He has cum dried on the inside of his thighs. His lips are chapped, his jaw sore, and his throat raw. “Then what the fuck was this for?” Kent spits. His body itches, crawls. “Why did I let you fuck me? Why the fuck would I do that if you don't do anything!”

Kent doesn't see the moment when Kheelan stands, but he freezes when Kheelan levels his gaze down at him.

“Someone has to die,” Kheelan says. Kheelan doesn’t ask Kent who should die, but Kent understands anyway. He swallows and says the name of a player he only barely knows. Who came up to replace a player who replaced a player.

“Good,” Kheelan tells him and presses warmth deep into his body.

*

The fae kill the player on the center of the practice ice with every Ace watching.

Kent doesn’t shiver with cold.

The fae slide magic down the player’s throat and turn his stomach inside out.

Kent doesn’t huddle for warmth.

No one breathes until the fae leave.

Amani breaks the silence first, a loud shriek that echoes over the open ground. Kent wishes he could look away from sound like he can a dead body. Amani legs give out after two staggering steps. She falls to her knees. Wounds reopen and blood blooms over her clothing, what little bare skin shows. She claws against the ground without any strength to move—she can’t crawl forward, backward. Her cries finally give way to words. “Parser!” is the first one, angry and ripped from her body as if by force. It rings across the ice and players turn away from him. She doesn’t though. She looks at him and keeps looking at him. Her dark eyes are damp and running. Her face turns ugly, her lips twist downward. “Parser it was me.” Her fists hit the ground, come back up, hit the ground again. “Parser,” she cries. Palms hitting the ground now. “Parser it was me!”

“Come on,” Kent hears Raz say, far away and distant even though she can’t be more than a few feet from him. “Let’s get warm.”

Kent isn’t frozen to the spot, he’s so warm from Kheelan’s magic, but Kent can’t move. He watches Amani cry as the moon sets and the sun starts to rise. She finally stops, stills. Her eyes don’t open and she slumps forward. It’s as if she lifts a spell.

Kent goes and picks Amani up. She hangs down, heavy and clumsy in his arms. He tries to shift, and blood sticks against his fingers. They’re halfway back to their home when she raises her fists, bangs them against his chest one at a time, one after another. He can barely feel them.

Spit or blood or something else bubbles over her lips. “It was supposed to be me.” She hits him. “He told me it was supposed to me. You should’ve told them it was me!”

She starts crying again. Kent can feel each shuddering breath against his body. He finally says, “I still kept Devon’s secret. That was the deal.”

“Parser,” Amani whispers.

“Tell me about Jack.”

She laughs something cold and choking. “Alicia,” she tells Kent. “That’s his mother’s name. A fae. A human and a fae. They have a beautiful vision for the future.” Kent clenches his jaw and doesn'tsay Amani already told him that. Amani keeps speaking, like she never does, but none of it makes sense. She talks about love and heat and magic, but Kent knows only two of the three ever go together. “The way Alicia loves Jack, his father, humans,” Amani mutters and then never finishes.

If Kent was in love with Kheelan, Kent wonders, would that make everything easier.

*

The fae don’t have a reason when they pick Amani up, tug her aside after a game they barely won. Kent grabs for her, her body swaying and barely upright, but a twist of magic takes her away.

Alarm pounds through him. He needs her. He can’t let her go, can’t let the fae fuck her—shove their dicks down her throat, into her body. Kent spins, sprints to find Kheelan. Kent can’t let them destroy her. She hasn’t finished. Hasn’t finished telling him everything about Jack. He still needs to—

Kent stops abruptly, Kheelan appearing in front of him.

“Do you want to watch?” Kheelan asks.  
  
Kent swallows. Shakes his head.

“I’ll bring her to you,” Kheelan tells him. “When they’re done.”

“Will she—”

“She’ll be alive,” Kheelan says. Kent shuts his eyes as everything sways. He opens them and Kheelan is a step closer. Kent drops his head down, and Kheelan presses a cold hand against his cheek. Kheelan doesn’t make Kent look up, doesn’t make them kiss. He lingers for one moment, two, and then he’s walking to the cabin. Kent follows.

*

Kent waits outside the shack for Amani, salt line thick and undisturbed behind him. Heat stretches its fingers through his muscles, slinks its way around his veins. Kheelan put it in him, and Kent didn’t ask for it.

Kheelan returns with Amani in a twist of magic, her body settling to the ground. A soft landing, Kent thinks, when it could’ve been harsher. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look at Kheelan as he picks her up, his mouth sore and body hurting, cradling her to his chest.

Amani probably hurts more than he does. But then she’s passed out, and he isn’t. He staggers to his feet, and Kheelan shifts forward. Kent steps back and readjusts her in his arms. “I put her to sleep,” Kheelan says softly as Kent turns away. “Should last until the morning.”

Kent stumbles a bit as he walks away, but she doesn’t weigh much.

*

“Parser,” Amani whispers to him with a smile. The fire’s glow dances across her face, giving heat and light to her hair. “Jack is building something great.” Then it’s as if the pain registers. Her face twists and the light on her skin turns to valleys of shadows. She starts screaming.

*

Kent doesn’t wear much clothing anymore. Kheelan takes him away almost daily—the fae take Amani almost as often. And afterwards, Kheelan always shoves heat into Kent. It swelters and festers in the pit of his stomach, crawling out whenever the wind hits.

Kent rolls his shoulders under the jersey, as if the movement will hide the phantom pressure of Kheelan’s fingers, the tiny pricks of his nails digging into Kent’s skin. Kent wonders if they leave red marks. If the others can see. Not that they take off their clothing, it’s too cold. But Kent could now. Kent boils as he digs his skate blades into the ice. The sound is cold, and his skin warms.

He feels sick and too flushed, but he still has to play. Every game he plays more minutes, and he wonders if today he’ll finally collapse on the ice, too tired to move. They’re always double shifting on the ice to compensate for Amani. She can barely skate most days. Today is okay. Today, she can skate against the wind. Today, she can hold her stick.

Kent moves toward center ice and then cuts across to the bench. He picks up speed, weaving between his teammates. He starts another round, wishing the wind against his cheeks cut through the suffocating heat.

Fuck. He remembers warmth and Jack, and this is nothing like it. He thinks for a moment he sees Jack, across the ice. The same movement propelled by his strong, thick legs, but Kent twists his eyes away. Shakes off the image, because he knows it’s just a memory, slipping into today. It’s been happening recently, Kent seeing things that aren’t there, couldn’t be there. His head hurts, his blood rushes with magic, and then he sees Jack.

“Kent?”

Kent clenches his jaw and focuses on the ice. Apparently he’s starting to hear Jack, too. He remembers when people died from the cold, they would see mirages first, muttering to someone not there. Kent wonders if it’s possible to die the same way, but instead of freezing, he overheats.

“Kent!”

Kent twists. He knows. That can’t be. Too clear for. Kent’s momentum takes him backward. He slams into the boards. His breath catches in his throat and his eyes desperately try to find—

“Zimms.” Kent swallows. He moves forward, because Jack starts to move forward.

And Jack has a hat tucked under his helmet and a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. He’s taller than Kent remembers, taller than Kent now. Which makes sense, because Jack must’ve grown. Which makes sense, because Jack is real. Is here. And Jack has on a few layers which make him bulky, but the fabric impedes his movements the same way it always did. And his eyes. Jack’s eyes are this bright, beautiful blue. The same blue they always were, are.

Kent remembers looking down at them as he laid above Jack, and he remembers looking up at them. Kent remembers how the eyes tracked his movement, the way they tracked the puck, and when they tracked the fae to know when it was safe and. Kent stops abruptly, inches short of the center line.

He suddenly remembers he’s on center ice. That the fae surround them. The sound of the crowd reaches him like it usually never does in warm up, during games. He hears them jeer. He hears them pound against the ice cage, jostle one another.

“Kent,” Jack says again, and Kent shakes his head. Because they can’t be doing this. Can’t be doing this here when all Amani has told Kent about Jack comes rushing back, and all the promises Jack and him made battle for recognition.

But Kent leans forward even though he should skate away. If Kheelan realizes who this is. Kheelan knows everything. Kheelan will hurt Jack, torture him slowly to drain out every bit of his magic and then kill him. He will make Kent watch and make him beg. Probably make him beg with his body, and Kent knows he’d let Kheelan do anything if it was for Jack’s life, has already done so much for the secrets Amani has let fall from her lips.

Kent knows all this.

But he still skates forward a few inches more, tilts his head into Jack’s, their helmets not quite touching, and says, “I thought.” Kent shakes his head and clears his throat, ignoring Jack saying his name. “I thought you got out.”

Kent reaches out, but that must be an invisible line Kent shouldn’t have crossed because Jack shifts back. “What are you doing here?” Kent mumbles. He can’t keep his arm from reaching again, even though it pushes Jack further away. Kent drops his arm, leans forward a little. The weight from his body moves him an inch forward. Jack shifts an inch back. Kent feels sick. Jack's movement an echo of Kent's motions whenever Kheelan reaches for him.

Kent's suddenly aware he isn’t wearing any layers. He doesn’t have a hat. He has no scarf. His arms are covered by the jersey, but his body doesn’t move as if it has on bulky fabric. Because he doesn’t. Fae magic infests him and Jack—blood rushes from Kent’s face. He feels shaky. Jack knows. Jack has to know the fae gave Kent magic. Probably knows what he has to do to pay for it. Magic always has a price, a steep price. Whether it’s sacrificing friends or parts of him, the fae don’t hand out their magic, don’t let humans buy it cheaply.

“I’m going to get you out,” Jack says without moving closer, reaching for Kent, echoing the promise they made to leave together. Kent feels laughter bubble up in his throat. Jack can’t be serious. Doesn’t he remember, Jack left Kent? Jack left Kent to play a game where the only outcome is death, and Kent placed himself in repears’ hands to cheat it. If Jack wanted to get Kent out, he would’ve done it then. They would’ve gotten out together.

Kent opens his mouth, not sure what would tumbling out when the whistle blows. Kent jerks around. The Aces have fallen into position behind him. Raz strikes her stick twice against the ice. Devon repeats the gesture. Kent forgot they had a game to play. He numbly hits the ice, too.

Kent feels sick. The Aces can’t win tonight. He can’t have any chance of Jack dying. Wouldn’t live with himself if that’s what happened.

Kent loses the faceoff to Jack, and Jack sprints down the ice, puck cradled against his stick. He shoots at Bells and the puck barely misses the net. First play of the game, and Devon slams his body into Jack’s trying to take the puck back. Kent hasn’t moved from the face off circle, and reality drives sharply into him. Jack doesn’t care if his team beats the Aces. He might even want that.

How else can you get someone out of this system but to kill them? Amani said Jack got out, but he obviously couldn’t leave the fae behind, couldn’t hide from them. So Jack plays hockey, and Jack plays to win. He told Kent he’d get Kent out. He wants the fae to kill Kent.

Kent clenches his jaw, and he goes after Jack. Because he didn’t do all this only to die. Because if there’s anything Kent knows, it’s how to play hockey and win. Survive.

*

Kent scores the dirty, winning goal. He skates to center ice with a slash on his cheek and blood staining the collar of his jersey. He jerks his eyes up to the fae in the stands, and they begin the slow chant that always come afterwards. Magic starts to shiver on the ice, and Kent finds Kheelan standing right on the other side of the ice, and then the ice walls opens up, and instead of another fae coming to choose, it’s Kheelan.

Kent’s heart springs to his throat. Kheelan looks at Kent, and then he looks at the other team. His eyes fall onto Jack, and Kent knows. Knows Kheelan knows who that is.

Kent tries to sprint forward, but someone is holding his arm, and Kent tries to shake it off as Kheelan points at Jack. Kent hears himself shout. His knees hit the ice. He scrambles back to his feet, and still he can’t move forward. Someone holds him back.

“Kheelan!” Kent screams. He jerks free, and Kent finds himself between Kheelan and Jack. Kent can’t help the fear moving down his spine as Kheelan looks at him, and Kent can imagine the cold that clings to him even as they touch, even as Kheelan presses against Kent. Magic picks up in the air, the crowd of fae calling it, pushing it, driving it. Kheelan’s hair shifts with it, his clothes float. His pale, frozen eyes rake up and down Kent.

Kent swallows. “Not him,” Kent says. “Not Jack.”

Kheelan shrugs. “But we’ve chosen.”

“No!” Kent shouts. “No,” he says quieter, magic prodding at his skin, his body. “You said I could decide. If I wanted to. I’m deciding. Not him.”

Kheelan laughs. “So if not him, then who? You?”

Kent doesn’t even pause when he says, “No. No, not me.” Because he believes in surviving, so he turns around and he points to the first player he sees. “Him.”

Jack spins, shouts. Kheelan smiles, raising his hand and calling magic to it. It presses into a log, thin blade, magic rushing by and sharpening it. Jack tries to move forward, and Kent shoves him back. Kheelan kills the player and drags the body off the ice.

Jack cries.

Kent doesn’t want to leave him, but Amani takes Kent’s arm. She pulls him away as Jack’s team goes to him. Jack doesn’t even look up as Kent leaves. Amani passes him to Devon, and when Kent looks back, Amani has gone back to Jack, dropped a hand onto his shoulder even though she barely has the strength left to move. He can’t hear what Amani says. Kent wonders if she’ll tell him. Probably not.

“So that was Zimms?” Devon asks, and Kent nods, moving from the ice onto solid ground. He almost trips. “Glad you found him,” Devon says when nausea forces Kent to stop. “Glad you saved him.”

“You know him?” Kent asks.

“Amani’s been telling me about him.”

*

Kheelan takes Kent away in a twist of magic before the night is through. He keeps Kent in the cabin for three days.

*

Kent and Amani sit next to one another, Amani’s body pressed against his. The fire burns in front of them, and Kent’s body temperature stays the same. She keeps shivering though. He wishes she could take all his heat. Kent asks Amani what she told Jack.

Amanai coughs. Her eyes flutter open and then closed. “Told you he always kept skating. Fighting. He's always fighting. Not going to leave until he gets everyone out. Everyone safe.”

“Amani,” Kent says, because none of that makes sense.

She slumps against him, asleep. Kent closes his eyes, too.

*

After practice, Devon shoves a piece of paper into Kent’s hand. Kent almost drops it, but Devon’s hand closes over his, keeping the paper safe inside. “Read it in a salt circle,” Devon tells. Then he goes to Amani, like he always does.

Kent can’t read.

Kent takes the paper to the cabin anyway. It’s the first time he goes there without Kheelan, and he doesn’t like it. He rims the cabin in salt, and then he pulls out the piece of paper. It unfolds to the size of his hand. He looks at the writing as if the lines will suddenly speak aloud to him.

They don’t.

Kent scowls. He rips the paper.

“Kent,” Jack says, and Kent starts. He spins around, but no one is there. “We’re going to get you out.” Kent looks down at the piece of paper and picks it up. “Three days,” Jack says, and then he tells Kent what to do. Where to go. There’s food he needs to bring with him. There’s a bag of salt hidden he needs to get too.

Jack stops speaking, and Kent numbly rips the paper again. Jack doesn’t speak. Kent tears it. Nothing. He shreds it into pieces so small. Jack doesn’t say another word.

Kent wonders if this is the fae playing a trick on him. Except Devon is the one who gave him the note. Devon who Amani has saved, made Kent save.

Kent shuts his eyes.

*

Kent collects what Jack told him to. He wonders how long Devon was preparing for this, Amani protecting him day after day. Kent drags on layers of clothing, because he doesn’t want Jack to notice the obvious signs of magic again, even though Jack used magic with the note. With his voice.

Halfway to where Jack told Kent to go, Kent turns around. He goes back, and he finds Amani. “Parser,” she says to him, and Kent picks her up. She groans, and Kent wonders if there’s a part of her that doesn’t hurt.

*

Kent walks past the cacti, the bodies scattered around them. He keeps walking and keeps walking, Amani in his arms and a bag loaded with dried strips of elk and salt on his back.

When he gets there, Jack isn’t there. There’s a fae instead.

Kent doesn’t do anything dramatic. He doesn’t cry or shout. He just closes his eyes. Can’t believe he was so stupid. He lived for years, outlived hundreds, and this is how he dies.

“Kent,” the fae says. The fae doesn’t call him Parser. Kent opens his eyes. “Jack sent me.”

*

There’s not enough food for Kent and Amani to make the journey, the fae says. He is short, lithe. He has blonde hair and blue eyes. He came for Kent, not for Amani, the fae tells Kent.

Amani stirs in Kent’s arms. He shifts to try and make her more comfortable. She cries out. “Take her,” Kent says.

The fae steps forward. “Jack told me to get you out.”

Jack doesn’t want Kent, Kent thinks. Jack doesn’t know how much the fae have given him, how many he’s killed. “They’re going to kill her.” Or she’s going to die one day. Go to sleep and never wake up. Collapse on the ice and someone takes advantage. She can’t even stand right now.

“Parser,” Amani whispers, and Kent clutches her tighter. The fae steps forward, and Kent takes a step back. He takes a deep breath, pushes down instinct and steps forward, meeting the fae’s outstretched arms. The fae takes Amani and tugs her close.

“Bitty?” she asks softly, and the fae speaks to her, voice too low for Kent to catch what is said. Amani’s head twists, and her bright eyes look at Kent. “Kent,” she says, and Kent jerks his head. She reaches out a hand, and Kent grabs it. She squeezes and he can barely feel it. She tells him, “I’ll be back. We’ll get everyone out. Jack will.” Kent nods, a lump in his throat. He tries to draw away, but she holds on. “You need to protect Devon,” Amani says.

“Yeah,” Kent says. He knows now.

Amani drops his hand. He lingers for a moment, tracing his fingers along her face, up to where her fire hair coils out from under her hat.

“He’s going to save the world,” Amani whispers to him, and Kent doesn’t know who she’s talking about.

*

“I burned her,” Kent tells Kheelan when he demands to know what happened to her. “I burned her!” Kent’s voice breaks, imagining how she would’ve screamed. How she would’ve smelled. How her hair would’ve gone up in flames, and how she would’ve turned to ashes, bones to dust, swept away by the wind. No one to find her. “I saved her,” Kent says, whispers desperately, and Kheelan reaches for him.

Kent twists away, face wet. Fuck.

“She’s dead,” Kent mutters. “Deal’s off.”

He doesn’t know what deal, he just knows he wants the fucking to stop.

Kheelan doesn’t say a word, doesn’t call magic into his hands, and Kent leaves, cold beginning to slip into his blood.

*

An elk dies, and Kent knows without asking that Devon did it. He needs the meat.

Alvarie draws Kent in after a game. “Tell me who,” she demands.

Kent looks around at the Aces, the ones who haven’t ducked out of the wind yet. His eyes move across faces he doesn’t remember the names of and they fall onto Raz.

“She did,” Kent says, tipping her head to Raz. Alvarie scowls, and starts forward. Raz snaps her head up, and Bells screams. She scrambles to her partner, and Devon latches onto her, pulls her back. Pulls Bells away, kicking and screaming. Devon turns so Bells can’t see when Raz is taken, Alvarie’s hand fisting in Raz’s hair. Raz screams at Kent. She calls him all the names others have before, and Kent stuffs his hands into his pocket. Kent starts toward the shack, and Kheelan falls into step with him.

Kent wonders if Kheelan knows, but all the fae does is push warmth into his body. “Two days.” Kent wishes it wasn’t even one.

*

The fae don’t kill Raz because they never kill the first time for elk.

*

Devon gives Kent a piece of paper without a word, and Kent goes to the cabin. He hasn’t been back to it since he gave Amani to the fae. To Jack’s fae. He wonders if Jack’s fae is the same as Kheelan. If he steals magic by fucking Jack. Kent hopes Jack never lets a fucking fae touch him. Not even his mother. If his mother is a fae like Amani said. Kent hopes not.

Kent tears an edge of the paper.

“Kent,” Jack says, and Kent sinks to the floor. He draws his knees up to his neck and listens to Jack’s instructions. The sounds wash over him, but he tries so hard to listen, to remember exactly what he needs to do. It’s the same really, as last time. But the meat is in a different place as is the salt. It’s a different time, a different location. “See you soon,” Jack tells Kent.

*

Kent sets fire to the lake, and then he runs hard and fast in the other direction. He bursts into the shack, and he goes to Raz. He ignores Bells, screaming at him, hitting him to let Raz go. Kent yanks Raz to her feet, and she cries in pain. Kent drags her out the door. She can’t fight hard against him, but she tries.

“Stop,” he hisses to her finally. “Stop. Or Alvarie is going to find you.”

Raz freezes.

“Good,” Kent says, and when he starts dragging her, she stumbles along next to him.

*

When they get to the meeting place, the small fae is there again. His eyes rake over Raz, shivering and in pain. “Not enough food for two,” the fae says, and Kent nods. He knows. Raz looks wide-eyed at the fae.

*

Kheelan finds Kent first, asks him who did it. The fire on the lake, the hole in the ice, the running water. “Raz,” Kent tells him. “You can still smell the smoke on her.”

Kheelan looks at him. Doesn’t look away for one moment, two. Magic starts to swirl, and Kent wonders if Kheelan doesn’t believe him. If Kheelan plans to rip the truth out of Kent’s throat again.

But the magic only pushes two days of heat into Kent’s body and then it settles. Kent lets out a shaking breath.

*

The fae don’t say Raz disappeared. They don’t say a word, but they bring in someone to replace her.

*

Kheelan crouches down next to Kent as he pulls clothing off of a dead body. He starts a little, didn’t know Kheelan would stop by again.

“I’m not stupid,” Kheelan says after a while. “I’m covering for you. With Raz.”

“What do you mean?” Kent tears the jersey off over the body’s head. He doesn’t know her name. Hasn’t been paying attention to much these days.

“She couldn’t have run away on her own.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If you said it was Raz, but Raz wasn’t there for Alvarie to kill. No one would die—”

“If I could get Raz out,” Kent interrupts, trying to hide his shaking hands by unlacing the skates, “I wouldn’t still be here.” Kent jerks off the skates and goes immediately to peeling off the socks. “But I can’t leave, so I’m still here. But I don’t want to die, so I’m still telling you who does what stupid shit so I don’t fucking die.” Kent stuffs the socks into the skates. “I’m too much of a coward to fucking do anything that could get me killed.”

Kheelan doesn’t say anything, and when Kent looks up, the fae is gone. Kent balls his hands into fists and wills them to stop shaking.

*

Kent gets Bells out, and then he gets his other teammates out. One at a time, weeks or months apart.

No one speaks to him anymore as the fae pretend they kill human upon human because of him. The Aces know whomever Kent blames doesn’t actually do what he says they did. All they know is that Kent blames someone for something they didn’t do, and they die. Kent kills them. A human turned against a human.

It’s like when Amani first arrived, sharp looks and a distance that never closes. Devon ducks his head whenever Kent strays too near, mumbling an excuse whenever Kent tries to go to him. But Kent still protects him. Kent still protects everyone he can.

*

Kheelan kneels down next to Kent, and Kent flinches away. Kheelan doesn’t speak and neither does Kent. He keeps pulling clothing off of the body. Timmy. His name was Timmy.

Kent can’t win every game. Can’t save everyone.

They’re losing more because they don’t have a set team for long enough. Kent’s teammates are always changing, always dying.

“I know you’re lying,” Kheelan finally says.

Kent doesn’t hold in his breath. He deliberately lets one out, draws one in. “I’m not.”

“I saw you with the fae, the small one. Followed you.”

Kent freezes, hands mid air. He draws them back quickly. He tucks them under all the clothing he’s taken off so far.

“I haven’t told Alvarie,” Kheelan says.

“You here to make a deal again?” Kent asks.

“I…” Kent snaps his head up, and Kheelan stares down at dead Timmy. “No,” he finally says. “You don’t have to—don’t worry.” Kheelan jerks his head up suddenly, and Kent doesn’t look away. Kheelan has sharp, wide eyes. Kheelan swallows and then hesitantly reaches out. Kent flinches but doesn’t move away. He lets Kheelan press his cold hand against his cheek.

Kheelan shuts his eyes, and the air flutters with magic. Kent closes his eyes, too, ready for whatever Kheelan forces upon him. But when Kent opens his eyes, Kheelan is gone.

*

Kent leads Georgie to the meeting place, and there’s no fae waiting. Instead, there’s Amani with her fire red hair. Her skin is a healthy dark brown. Pain doesn’t flicker behind her eyes. She stands tall. She smiles when she sees Kent. And Kent chokes.

Amani rushes forward, and Kent opens up his arms. She slams into him. He staggers under her strength. She hugs him tight and close, and he tucks his face into her wiry hair. He squeezes back and his eyes shut. She is so strong.

“I told you I’d be back,” she whispers against his neck.

“I’ve been protecting Devon,” Kent responses.

“I know.”

“Tell me about Jack,” Kent requests, and she chuckles softly, arms tightening around him.

“He’s saving the world, just like I told you before. A city ringed in salt.”

“You told me it was a town before.”

“We’re growing.” Amani pulls back with a smile.

Kent brushes her hair out of her eyes. It springs right back once he drops his hand. He frowns. “You’re not wearing a hat. Does the fae—”

Amani shakes her head. “It’s getting warmer,” she tells him. “Haven't you seen it? The ice is melting.”

 


End file.
